By: Marianne Salina, Academic Advising and Assistance (AAA)

Academic Advising is a hub of conversation—we talk with students and professors regularly, we collaborate with colleagues across departments, and we try to touch base with each other on a regular basis. Conversation, in many ways, defines the work we do. More than our love for talking, however, is the great joy we derive from listening to our students and working with them to navigate the questions and challenges they face. Sometimes students need help with course planning or determining a major. In some cases, students may find themselves struggling to get back on track with their academics. When students reach out, it is our goal and a fundamental part of our mission to support them in every way we can.

Our office also engages in quite a bit of conversation with parents. Often parents contact us when they are very concerned about their student’s academic performance. Feeling a sense of panic and desperation, they will call our office with myriad concerns and questions. In the midst of these often long and thorough conversations, however, there exists one particularly troubling omission: the student is not there. The student may not even know this conversation is taking place on his or her behalf.

Our office, as with every other office on campus is careful to adhere to FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act), which legally protects a student’s privacy and all specific information regarding their academic records, their course schedules, and their professor or faculty advisor information, among other details. In compliance with this law, advisors in our office may only speak in general terms about a student’s performance, respecting and acknowledging legally that a student’s academic life at Gonzaga is indeed his or her own, and the specific details are in the hands of the student to disclose or not disclose with parents.

Now why mention FERPA? Why summon the concept of privacy and a student’s right to disclose? It’s an essential point because there are a surprising number of parent calls and parent visits to our office that leave the student—the very subject of our conversation—out entirely. While this may not seem concerning or alarming news to some, as a professional advisor and former college instructor, I am deeply worried when parents (well-intentioned, to be sure) climb into the driver’s seat and attempt to navigate the many challenges of college life for their student… without their student actively participating in the process. Why so troubling, one may ask? The answer is succinct: There exists no better way to rob a student of a learning opportunity than to do the task of communicating their needs for them.

Now to be clear, we love our GU parents. No doubt about it, Gonzaga’s parents are some of the most compassionate, generous, and deeply devoted members of our community, and we are incredibly fortunate to meet and work with the fine young men and women whom they’ve entrusted under our care and guidance. Our students bring with them tremendous stories and histories, and are stewards of social justice well before they land here. They actively serve in their communities, they are bright, intellectually curious leaders, they are passionate, and they are fully capable of taking on the challenges of higher education here at Gonzaga. In fact, their admission to Gonzaga is testament to their immense potential, which is precisely why we must respect their abilities by granting them some measure of autonomy.

The truth is, students will struggle while they are with us. In fact, if they don’t feel even a bit of the friction that learning requires, we would be gravely concerned. Students will fall, and they will learn to get back up. They will likely know great successes while they are here, and they may experience failure too. My message to our dear parents is this: let them experience all of it. When students learn where and how to ask for help, they are far more likely to repeat the process of inquiry again in the future. When students understand that challenges must be faced head on, by picking up a phone or walking to a particular resource office on campus, they will invariably take this skill of self-advocacy and carry it through their years at GU and well beyond into their chosen field of work.

Parents are a tremendous resource to their students well before, during, and likely well after college; we encourage them to be their student’s biggest cheerleaders and hopefully, a deep well of love and support. We also encourage parents to do the difficult work of letting go when it’s time to send a student to college, to allow their student some space to grow and develop a sense of self advocacy. It may be one of the most valuable skills a student can learn.